I guess I just realized whats been possible all this time.

As an electronic music producer we’re into dealing with technologies like MIDI and plugins. Who ever would have thought that you could use MIDI to connect a friend into your sequencer software?!

So its happened. This particular free program(MidiViaNet) that makes this possible has been around since 1998 all this time. It simply allows you to choose an input midi device and an output midi device (the input goes to your friend, and the output comes from your friend to you). Then you fire up your favorite midi enabled software and go!

I just got done spending a few hours playing along with Transflow in Australia who had my sequencer starting and stopping and changing tempo and playing beats and melodies… oh man, way too much fun!

You can find this sort of technology popping up all over now. A search for network midi will most likely get you tons of results. I think Apple’s Mac OSX Tiger now has an update that gives you built-in network capable MIDI drivers.

Now you might get this on your PC and have some trouble getting it to work properly, so here’s some suggestions to try..

Get MIDI-Yoke and MIDI-Ox to re-route or “re-wire” any midi inputs and outputs to exactly how you want them to be. This way you won’t have trouble with creating midi feedback loops or getting those “midi device is already in use” errors.

You may or may not have trouble getting this to work with your buddy over the internet on first try, so here’s a tip or two for that department:

1) Try changing the port on each end for yourself and for your friend. I used the default (4000) which didn’t work, but 8000 works fine for us.
2) Try using a VPN. You can create “Virtual Private Networks” in windows, but I haven’t tried it this way. The simplest way I know is to download a free program called Hamachi. Its owned by LogMeIn which is a reputable network solutions company. They can have you setting up a simple Hamachi VPN in minutes and you’ll both be totally connected to each other with no trouble.

# Posted by SixtySix 590 days ago